


A Dab Hand

by Kernezelda



Category: Prison Break
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fashion & Models
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-20 01:09:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5987113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kernezelda/pseuds/Kernezelda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For  SDWolfpup's birthday, I offered up a drabble-ish kind of thing. She prompted Prison Break and T-Bag: <i>how about T-bag doing basically anything mundane, like trying to go grocery shopping or something?</i> This is what happened, instead.<br/>
No spoilers, unless you've never seen an episode, and for names of two later season characters.<br/>
Tongue-in-cheek, written in the dead of night without the aid of a beta, much to their benefit, I'm sure, and posted without review for certainty of its drivel-hood. Read at your own risk! >:D<br/>
Originally posted to Livejournal 2009/09/12.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Dab Hand

  


Fashion magazines proclaimed that Theodore Bagwell ran their new darling boutique with a velvet glove over an iron fist. In fact, Teddy ran “A Dab Hand” with a plastic appendage cunningly shaped and interchangeable with several other clever devices designed to aid and enhance his lifestyle among the young and the beautiful and often terminally stupid.

At the moment, however, Teddy was tossing a toreador scarf over a mannequin's molded mane. He critically eyed the fall of fabric. "No," he decided, stripping away the silk and replacing it with a silver torc around the slim dark throat. He stepped away, raised his arm to rest a ringed knuckle at his chin. At last he nodded. "Yes."

He turned and stretched expansively, narrow shoulders unknotting as the hard tension of several hours' labor lifted. "Get a move on!" he snapped at his assistant. Link’s dull dome sank in acquiescence. The larger man shuffled toward the back of the shop, passing Sucre along the way.

Teddy sighed, knowing what was coming. Anxiously, the slender model hurried to his side. "Papi," he whispered, all liquid-dark eyes and lilting Latino accent, "Michael's saying he won't perform." The supple body radiated heat and sex, Sucre's hands dancing along Teddy's arm.

"Don't you worry your pretty little head," Teddy reassured him. Reaching into his pocket, he produced a snowy linen handkerchief, monogrammed and expensive. "You want to look beautiful for me, don't you?" Delicate strokes smudged the dark mascara at Sucre's eyes from sleek perfection to debauched beauty. “Now go get ready – the floor show starts in less than an hour.”

Relieved, Sucre ducked his head, and slipping the handkerchief from Teddy’s real hand, brazenly returned it, his fingers folding it into the pocket, lingering until Teddy lightly pushed him away. Grin restored, the Puerto Rican winked and sauntered back the way he’d come.

“So, my little Fish is getting cold feet again,” Teddy muttered. He ran artificial fingers through his goatee, smoothing it, soothing repetition of motion before his feet carried him after his more amenable model.

Past the work area, Teddy stopped in the Aquarium - what one of his first models had named the show-room with its aquamarine and sea-green tones, its glass walls that curved and bent light into glowing prismatic bars across clear cages and raised walkways winding through the seating areas. The name had stuck ever after. Standing unseen in the shadowed entrance, Teddy eyed his stable with pleasure.

Tancredi was basting a glittering panel onto Kellerman’s costume. Franklin was almost finished with his own, at the final touch of misting his muscular shoulders with gold-infused oil. Solid lures for the lady shoppers, who looked and lusted and paid filthy lucre for the privilege. Tancredi already wore her own gauzy gown, her hands steady as she neatly finished stitching, her expression calm and focused.

Teddy rolled his eyes to see Tweener flirting again with Sofia – Gretchen would slit his gizzard if she caught him at it. Beautiful enough to be a model herself, that woman took the business seriously and wouldn’t brook interference with her shows, the models – or her lovers. Fortunately, she was up front handling the last minute catering details. She'd nearly chopped his head off the last time they'd argued over arrangements - Teddy was glad they’d never taken their partnership beyond a professional relationship. He liked his parts where they were, and didn’t plan to lose any more.

And missing from the picture: his problem child, his prodigy straight from a Prada advertisement, his tattooed and tantalizing top draw. Michael “Fish” Scofield. As in cold fish. As in fresh meat in the fashion jungle. The press loved him for his sulky lips, his scornful refusal to divulge personal information, the challenge he projected from those heavy-lidded eyes. “Blue Steel” was only one of the terms they applied, and the women (and some of the men) who frequented “A Dab Hand” weren’t shy about wondering what other qualities might deserve that appellation. 

And of all his models, Scofield was the only one who bucked Teddy’s reins. While his features were attractive enough, Scofield earned his exalted status through secrecy – he was a mystery that the media desperately wanted to solve. What lay behind those walled eyes, those endless lines of ink? No performance had ever revealed more than hints – a tipped smile, a bared wrist, a glimpse of tanless white skin starkly contrasted with black lines, a sword, a rose.

 _Vanity Fair_ ’s ace reporter Alex Mahone had made it his personal mission to get to the bottom of Michael Scofield. Teddy intended to get there first.

He was interested in the mettle of his winsome male model – and no one refused Teddy’s interest for too long. Look at Tweener, tamed down nicely from the wild jailbait he’d been. Hard fingers tapped Teddy’s thigh as his searching gaze failed to find Scofield glowering at him anywhere.

He turned back into the workroom and spied Link at the sink, scrubbing it clean of a variety of vat dyes. “Where’s Scofield?”

“LINK SMASH!” Link smashed his fists into the sink. Teddy blinked. He gingerly approached and saw that his lunkhead employee was crushing thick clumps of half-dried dyes into tinier clumps to more easily force them through the strainer. The man’s arms were spattered in garish array all the way to his shoulders, his white tank top a display of modern art of no appreciable charm. This close, Teddy could hear the theme song from The Incredible Hulk playing on Link’s iPod.

Teddy, resplendent in white tux and tails, backed away. “Never mind,” he said, and departed quickly. One more place to look – the small double dressing rooms behind the workroom that connected again to the Aquarium via a short corridor, locked with a keycode so the patrons couldn’t get in.

The women were all out already, so Teddy didn’t stop, heading straight to the last door, which opened into the largest of the not-very-large rooms. And there they were, Scofield and Sucre, fist-bumping and smiling until they saw Teddy glaring. Sucre hopped off the counter and slid past him, winking at Scofield in passing.

“You want something?” Scofield turned back to the mirror, his eyes coldly meeting Teddy’s.

“Sucre tells me you don’t want to perform.” Teddy shut the door behind him. It was warm in the small room, barely more than a couple of feet between him and the shining wet skin at the nape of Scofield’s neck.

“We have a problem.”

Teddy’s eyes fastened to the tattoos bared as Scofield stretched his sleeved arms and then brought them back to rub long fingers over the bare skin of his scalp. His mouth dried, and he licked his lips. “Yeah?”

“Yes. I asked Sucre to get you here.” Scofield met Teddy’s startled gaze with a smirk.

“I—I don’t understand.” Sweat gathered in Teddy’s palm.

In the mirror, the Fish’s cool eyes gleamed. White teeth glinted between parting lips. “You’re not too bright, are you, Theodore?”

“Hey, now, none of that! Don’t you forget who’s in charge around here!” Against his will, Teddy’s accent thickened at hearing his Christian name.

Scofield smirked some more. “I think it’s clear that without me, you wouldn’t be going anywhere.”

Teddy sputtered, took an angry step closer. Scofield rose swiftly to his feet and turned. In the narrow space between them, his warm breath mixed with Teddy’s own. “I think I could do a lot more for you than you know,” he said, voice low, husky.

“Oh, I know you could, Pretty,” Teddy managed to mutter, and wrapped his hale hand around the halt, because the show started in less than twenty minutes and he couldn’t do any of the things he wanted to do to Michael Scofield in that time and still pull off the showcase of the season. No fleshly delight or filleting of said flesh – so Teddy started to take a step back. “You’re going to perform,” he said.

“Here? Now?” That taunting grin widened, making promises that Teddy was determined it would keep. He didn’t get his reputation by being pushed around by his models. The iron fist was his, and that velvet glove was coming off.

“After. You and me, Fish. I’ve let you run loose too long, boy. It’s time to teach you some manners, time you learned to swim with the current.” Teddy leaned in close, smelled Scofield’s soap-scented skin under the designer cologne. “This is my river, and I’m going to reel you in.”

Scofield stared at him, unblinking, and then smiled as if Teddy’s threat had amused him. “The show must go,” he said, and brushed past Teddy, tight costume hiding more than it revealed, the mind that powered muscle and bone and smirk and scorn dismissing Teddy even before the door shut gently between them.

Teddy stared into the mirror. His fist clenched on the counter, and his pants tightened. “I’m going to teach that boy some respect.” He nodded to himself, and carefully ruffled his hair into stylish disarray. “Tonight, he’s going to learn he’s just another chicken in the coop.”

Shaking out his pants, smoothing his tux and shirt, Teddy Bagwell left the dressing room and headed toward the Aquarium. He made his way up into the maze of runways, nodding at the models in the display cages, illuminated by lights flickering blue and red across the room. The high society horde was already filtering inside.

“Welcome,” Teddy cried out, master of his domain, maestro of his models, and took a quick glance across the chamber to where Scofield posed with studied languor in his glass cell, face turned up as if ignoring the hungry gaze of the crowd.

A light flared across Teddy, and he drank in the energy around him, felt himself lifted up, in control of them all.

“Hey, T-Bag!”

Another flash of light, and someone grabbed his arm.

“T-Bag!”

“What the fuck?!” The crowd vanished. The runways vanished.

“It’s time to head back inside, boss.”

T-Bag opened his eyes and stared in bleary horror at the gray bleachers, green grass, tall walls and fences of Fox River.

“Scofield, you _son-of-a—”_


End file.
